Frank Kimbrough Biography

Frank Marshall Kimbrough Jnr., 2 November 1956, Roxboro, North Carolina, USA. Kimbrough began playing piano as a very small child and took lessons from the age of seven. He played with several local bands before becoming resident in New York in 1981, where he spent many years playing piano in some obscurity even though he was a winner in the 1985 Great American Jazz Piano Competition. At the end of the decade, however, he teamed up with a rich variety of fellow musicians, appearing in a prominent role at live and studio gigs. Among these other artists and groups were Ben Allison, Michael Blake, the Jazz Composers Collective, Joe Locke, Ted Nash and Maria Schneider, with whom he toured internationally, appearing also on her 1996 Grammy nominated Coming About. With the Collective, which he co-leads with Allison, he has been prominent in well-received projects paying tribute to the music of Andrew Hill, Lennie Tristano and Herbie Nichols. Kimbrough was recipient of a Jazz Performance Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts for a series of 1995 concerts celebrating the music of Nichols, on which subject he is a widely respected authority. In 1996, he was appointed to the adjunct faculty of New York Universitys Department of Performing Arts Professions, where he teaches jazz piano and improvisation courses, and he has also conducted seminars and workshops in various parts of America and in France and England. His association with Locke from the late 90s onwards has done much to bring this gifted pianist to the wider attention he deserves. His fluid playing delineates his experience and sensitive touch, while his improvisational gifts are made abundantly clear at every live performance.

Source: The Encyclopedia of Popular Music by Colin Larkin. Licensed from Muze.